Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Wolfgang Denk]

Hello,

it has been brought to my attention that lately a number of commits
have been added to the BareBox repository (and released as BareBox
v2010.10.0) that contain literal copies of hundreds of lines of code
taken from the U-Boot project.

While this is OK in general (U-Boot is covered by the GPLv2/GPLv2+),
in this case the code has been added to the BareBox repository
without any attribution to the original authors.  Instead, the
respective commits carry only SoB lines like these:

	Signed-off-by: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
	Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>

Commits that very clearly show this problem are for example:

 d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
 0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
 aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
 7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper

In the examples given, most of the copied code was actually written by
Marian Balakowicz and should be attributed to him.  Neither
Jean-Christophe nor Sascha have any credits on that code.


We all have been working long enough in free and open source software
projects that I can assume you are well aware of the basic principles
of open source software licensing and the requirement to attribute
code to its original authors.


Jean-Christophe, may I please ask you to stop copying code from other
projects without proper attribution?


Sascha, may I please ask you to make sure that proper attribution of
all such copied code gets added to the BareBox repository and released
code?


[Please make sure to keep me on cc: to any replies as I am not
subscribed to the BareBox mailing list.]


Thanks.

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative  prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 15:52 Tue 05 Oct     , Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> it has been brought to my attention that lately a number of commits
> have been added to the BareBox repository (and released as BareBox
> v2010.10.0) that contain literal copies of hundreds of lines of code
> taken from the U-Boot project.
> 
> While this is OK in general (U-Boot is covered by the GPLv2/GPLv2+),
> in this case the code has been added to the BareBox repository
> without any attribution to the original authors.  Instead, the
> respective commits carry only SoB lines like these:
> 
> 	Signed-off-by: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
> 	Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>
> 
> Commits that very clearly show this problem are for example:
> 
>  d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
>  0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
>  aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
>  7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper
> 
> In the examples given, most of the copied code was actually written by
> Marian Balakowicz and should be attributed to him.  Neither
> Jean-Christophe nor Sascha have any credits on that code.
we never take it first otherwise i'll have put a copyright

after if Marian have a copyright missing we will add it with pleasure
> 
> 
> We all have been working long enough in free and open source software
> projects that I can assume you are well aware of the basic principles
> of open source software licensing and the requirement to attribute
> code to its original authors.
> 
> 
> Jean-Christophe, may I please ask you to stop copying code from other
> projects without proper attribution?
we change no copyright ever, we keep them clean and we do let it the SoB are
here as we have apply the modification without any copyright modification

Best Regards,
J.

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 18:00 Tue 05 Oct     , Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD wrote:
> On 15:52 Tue 05 Oct     , Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > it has been brought to my attention that lately a number of commits
> > have been added to the BareBox repository (and released as BareBox
> > v2010.10.0) that contain literal copies of hundreds of lines of code
> > taken from the U-Boot project.
> > 
> > While this is OK in general (U-Boot is covered by the GPLv2/GPLv2+),
> > in this case the code has been added to the BareBox repository
> > without any attribution to the original authors.  Instead, the
> > respective commits carry only SoB lines like these:
> > 
> > 	Signed-off-by: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
> > 	Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>
> > 
> > Commits that very clearly show this problem are for example:
> > 
> >  d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
> >  0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines

> >  aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
> >  7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper
for the record the two are not borrowed at all from U-Boot but done based on
barebox

and as we all known the uImage format come from U-Boot I just sync it
recently without commit details as we do for Kconfig we do not trac
modifications details and we respect the copyright. SO I'll repeat myself
if Marian copyright is missing We will add it with pleasure.

Best Regards,
J.

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD,

In message <20101005162019.GK25320@game.jcrosoft.org> you wrote:
>
> > >  d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
> > >  0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
> 
> > >  aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
> > >  7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper
> for the record the two are not borrowed at all from U-Boot but done based on
> barebox

Oh. Interesting statement. Let me check again. 

Your commit:

	commit aba80a2d2d0f1b25185246925577ce2108247dde
	Author: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
	Date:   Thu Sep 23 06:48:42 2010 +0200

	    image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant

So BB used to have IH_CPU and switched to IH_ARCH :

Please compare against this U-Boot commit:

	commit b97a2a0a21f279d66de8a9bdbfe21920968bcb1c
	Author: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>
	Date:   Tue Jan 8 18:14:09 2008 +0100

	    [new uImage] Define a API for image handling operations
	    
	    - Add inline helper macros for basic header processing
	    - Move common non inline code common/image.c
	    - Replace direct header access with the API routines
	    - Rename IH_CPU_* to IH_ARCH_*
	    
	    Signed-off-by: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>

Pay special attention to the "Rename IH_CPU_* to IH_ARCH_*" part.

Not borrowed?  What an extremely unlikely coincidence then!  I think
you should try to explain that.

> and as we all known the uImage format come from U-Boot I just sync it
> recently without commit details as we do for Kconfig we do not trac
> modifications details and we respect the copyright. SO I'll repeat myself
> if Marian copyright is missing We will add it with pleasure.


I recommend you to get a clue about what is needed to properly
attribute code to the people who actually wrote it, instead of
submitting it without any due reference and then even claiming you
developed it yourself.  I guess you are not interested in having a
reputation as a plagiarist?

Despite your ludicrous statement of "not borrowed at all" I still
assume, for now, this was just an accident, and that bringing it to
your attention is all that is needed to settle the matter.  It is
your turn now.


Thanks.

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
The following statement is not true.  The previous statement is true.

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 19:53 Tue 05 Oct     , Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD,
> 
> In message <20101005162019.GK25320@game.jcrosoft.org> you wrote:
> >
> > > >  d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
> > > >  0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
> > 
> > > >  aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
> > > >  7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper
> > for the record the two are not borrowed at all from U-Boot but done based on
> > barebox
> 
> Oh. Interesting statement. Let me check again. 
> 
> Your commit:
> 
> 	commit aba80a2d2d0f1b25185246925577ce2108247dde
> 	Author: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
> 	Date:   Thu Sep 23 06:48:42 2010 +0200
> 
> 	    image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
> 
> So BB used to have IH_CPU and switched to IH_ARCH :
> 
> Please compare against this U-Boot commit:
> 
> 	commit b97a2a0a21f279d66de8a9bdbfe21920968bcb1c
> 	Author: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>
> 	Date:   Tue Jan 8 18:14:09 2008 +0100
> 
> 	    [new uImage] Define a API for image handling operations
> 	    
> 	    - Add inline helper macros for basic header processing
> 	    - Move common non inline code common/image.c
> 	    - Replace direct header access with the API routines
> 	    - Rename IH_CPU_* to IH_ARCH_*
> 	    
> 	    Signed-off-by: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>
> 
> Pay special attention to the "Rename IH_CPU_* to IH_ARCH_*" part.
> 
> Not borrowed?  What an extremely unlikely coincidence then!  I think
> you should try to explain that.
> 
> > and as we all known the uImage format come from U-Boot I just sync it
> > recently without commit details as we do for Kconfig we do not trac
> > modifications details and we respect the copyright. SO I'll repeat myself
> > if Marian copyright is missing We will add it with pleasure.
> 
> 
> I recommend you to get a clue about what is needed to properly
> attribute code to the people who actually wrote it, instead of
> submitting it without any due reference and then even claiming you
> developed it yourself.  I guess you are not interested in having a
> reputation as a plagiarist?
I'll repeat I'ev not borrow these two they look similar I agree but I do not
borrow them. And I'm fine to put Marian copyright I eally do not carefor the
other 2 commits. But these two I just had the same idea by looking at the
code of barebox when I was working to re-introduce the mutli-image support.

The two other commits are here for sync before finish the full sync of uImage
and I will not take Marina work as mine. I'll put my SoB as I apply it and
responsible for this integration as I did for kconfig and others without take
the copyright.

Best Regards,
J.

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Sascha Hauer]

Hello WOlfgang,

On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 03:52:13PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> it has been brought to my attention that lately a number of commits
> have been added to the BareBox repository (and released as BareBox
> v2010.10.0) that contain literal copies of hundreds of lines of code
> taken from the U-Boot project.
> 
> While this is OK in general (U-Boot is covered by the GPLv2/GPLv2+),
> in this case the code has been added to the BareBox repository
> without any attribution to the original authors.  Instead, the
> respective commits carry only SoB lines like these:
> 
> 	Signed-off-by: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj@jcrosoft.com>
> 	Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>
> 
> Commits that very clearly show this problem are for example:
> 
>  d424ce7  image: factorise image printing contents
>  0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
>  aba80a2  image: rename IH_CPU to IH_ARCH to be more concistant
>  7bd7d59  image: factorise string helper
> 
> In the examples given, most of the copied code was actually written by
> Marian Balakowicz and should be attributed to him.  Neither
> Jean-Christophe nor Sascha have any credits on that code.
> 
> 
> We all have been working long enough in free and open source software
> projects that I can assume you are well aware of the basic principles
> of open source software licensing and the requirement to attribute
> code to its original authors.

Does that mean U-Boot has credits to all the original mtd authors when
updating U-Boots mtd support to a newer kernel? /me is digging in the
archives; no, it has not. Does that mean with
9b7076229ec6a958bd835ab70745f7676297ce82 Ilya Yanok is the original
author of jffs2 summary support? No, it's the same in the Linux kernel.
Does that mean you are the original author of include/linux/list.h in
700a0c648df72f2c8e0589c0d0470b5ffd7cab7b? Obviously not.

Please lets go not down that road, it leads to nowhere.

We obviously copy code from other projects like U-Boot and the kernel
and we do our best to keep the copyrights intact, but we can only do
this on a per file base, not on a per commit base. That said,
common/image.c has a copyright to semihalf in U-Boot which is missing in
barebox, we can add this. Note that Jean-Christophe added a copyright to
*you* and not to *him* to this file, which means that he did not even
try to put this his own work.

Sascha

-- 
Pengutronix e.K.                           |                             |
Industrial Linux Solutions                 | http://www.pengutronix.de/  |
Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0    |
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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Sascha,

In message <20101006072749.GR28242@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
>
> > We all have been working long enough in free and open source software
> > projects that I can assume you are well aware of the basic principles
> > of open source software licensing and the requirement to attribute
> > code to its original authors.
>
> Does that mean U-Boot has credits to all the original mtd authors when
> updating U-Boots mtd support to a newer kernel? /me is digging in the
> archives; no, it has not. Does that mean with

We try hard to properly attribute code to the original sources. I do
not claim that everything in U-Boot is perfect, and if you look long
enough (and especially far enough back into our 10+ years of
history), you probably can find exceptions. We are trying to improve,
and we take all hints on such topics serious.

In each and everycase, whenever someone asked us (either on the
U-Boot mailing list or directly) about Copyright issues or similar
topics, we always addressed these questions directly and as good as
possible.  Please feel free to search the archives.


In the specific case of MTD updates you mention here the commit
messages (extracted with "git log drivers/mtd") contain for example:

commit 6cd752f9:
...
    The check condition is similat to what is in linux/next.

commit 18b5a4b4:
...
    This makes it similar to what is in the kernel NAND driver.

commit aad4a28b:
...
    This was originally part of Thomas Gleixner's patch for
    adding support for 4KiB pages.
    This is not part of the U-Boot NAND driver so updating the
    driver with this to sync up with the kernel NAND driver.

commit 4f41e7ea:
...
    This patch updates the "chip_shift" calculation in the
    NAND driver. This is being done to sync up the NAND driver with
    the kernel NAND driver.

commit aaa8eec5:
...
    This patch adds support for NANDs greater than 2 GB.
    Patch is based on the MTD NAND driver in the kernel.

commit 154b5484:
...
    Update chipselect handling in davinci_nand.c so that it can
    handle 2 GByte chips the same way Linux does:  as one device,

commit 8d2effea:
...
    This patch brings the U-Boot MTD infrastructure in sync with the current
    Linux MTD version (2.6.30-rc3). Biggest change is the 64bit device size
    support and a resync of the mtdpart.c file which has seen multiple fixes
    meanwhile.

commit c45912d8:
...
    NAND: sync with 2.6.27

    This brings the core NAND code up to date with the Linux kernel.

commit cfa460ad:
...
    Update MTD to that of Linux 2.6.22.1

    A lot changed in the Linux MTD code, since it was last ported from
    Linux to U-Boot. This patch takes U-Boot NAND support to the level
    of Linux 2.6.22.1 and will enable support for very large NAND devices

etc.

As you can see, we try to document where such code is coming from.


> 9b7076229ec6a958bd835ab70745f7676297ce82 Ilya Yanok is the original
> author of jffs2 summary support? No, it's the same in the Linux kernel.

No, he is not. Yes, you are right, proper attibution is missing in
this commit, too.  Such cases can happen, even with sevral people
reviewing the submitted patches.

But as you can see from the many examples above we at least _try_ to
be careful about code atributions and copyrights.


> Does that mean you are the original author of include/linux/list.h in
> 700a0c648df72f2c8e0589c0d0470b5ffd7cab7b? Obviously not.

Ah, you have to go back to an example from 5 years ago? At the time
of that patch, the whole git project was just a mere 4 months old,
and git version control had been used for the Linux kernel for just a
very few weeks. There was no tradition to have Signed-off-by: lines
yet, etc.  Many things were far from perfect, then.

But even then, the first line of the commit message reads:

	Add common (with Linux) MTD partition scheme and ...

The wording "common (with Linux)" may not be really good either, but
at least it's a pretty clear hint. And the file in question is
located in include/linux/ , which also carries a certain meaning.

We have learned our lessons since then.

And if someone points out errors in our processes, we are answerable
for our mistakes and try to improve.


> Please lets go not down that road, it leads to nowhere.
>
> We obviously copy code from other projects like U-Boot and the kernel
> and we do our best to keep the copyrights intact, but we can only do
> this on a per file base, not on a per commit base. That said,

Please explain why it should be impossible in a commit message to say
that the hundreds of lines of code you add were not written by the
signees, but taken from somewhare else?  In the examples I listed one
could even give the corresponding git commit ID from the U-Boot repo,
for example:

0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
...
	Copied from U-Boot commit b97a2a0

Do you think such a short hint cannot be done?

For your reference:

	commit b97a2a0a21f279d66de8a9bdbfe21920968bcb1c
	Author: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>
	Date:   Tue Jan 8 18:14:09 2008 +0100

	    [new uImage] Define a API for image handling operations

	    - Add inline helper macros for basic header processing
	    - Move common non inline code common/image.c
===>	    - Replace direct header access with the API routines
	    - Rename IH_CPU_* to IH_ARCH_*

	    Signed-off-by: Marian Balakowicz <m8@semihalf.com>


> common/image.c has a copyright to semihalf in U-Boot which is missing in
> barebox, we can add this. Note that Jean-Christophe added a copyright to
> *you* and not to *him* to this file, which means that he did not even
> try to put this his own work.

The copyright in the files is one thing. Attribution of large blocks
of code you import is another thing. My request is to attribute such code.

From the commits as they are now, most uninformed readers would
assume that the code was written by Jean-Christophe, which is not
correct.

As I wrote before in my message to JC, I consider this an accident,
i. e. rather ignorance than intention.  However, I would be seriously
disappointed if such things should happen again.


Thanks.

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it  had  been
taken away.                             - Terry Pratchett, _Sourcery_

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Uwe Kleine-König]

Hello Wolfgang,

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 03:56:44PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> From the commits as they are now, most uninformed readers would
> assume that the code was written by Jean-Christophe, which is not
> correct.
I really wonder why you care about the commit log.  I would care more
about the copyright statements in the code.  (Nevertheless I consider it
correct and fair to attribute in the commit log where the code is taken
from.)

I don't know if you want to make it easier for people to get the
annotations right/better when copying from U-Boot or not.  But if you
do, you could change your standard copyright header to include the
project's name.  Something like:

	/*
	 * (C) Copyright bla blub
	 *
	 * This file is part of das U-Boot, a versatile boot loader for
	 * many platforms.  U-Boot is free software ...
	 * ...
	 */

This doesn't help for the commit logs though.

> As I wrote before in my message to JC, I consider this an accident,
> i. e. rather ignorance than intention.  However, I would be seriously
> disappointed if such things should happen again.
I don't speak for barebox in general or Sascha or Pengutronix or
Jean-Christophe, but I think you cannot expect this to happen never ever
again.  I think the best you can achieve here is that the barebox
contributers get more aware of these issues and try to get it done
better in the future.

(Note, there is no offence intended in the whole mail.)

Best regards
Uwe

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Uwe Kleine-König]

Hi Wolfgang,

On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 10:08:10AM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> In message <20101007073842.GP29673@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
> > 
> > I really wonder why you care about the commit log.  I would care more
> > about the copyright statements in the code.  (Nevertheless I consider it
> > correct and fair to attribute in the commit log where the code is taken
> > from.)
> 
> The introduction of the Signed-off-by: system to the Linux kernel has
> been a significant improvement to make the origin of each and every
> line of code clear, independent of the copyright statements which
> quite often only list the original authors, even if the current file
> does not contain much of the original code any more.
Yep, it's a hard job to keep copyright statements up to date (and
sensible).  Updating the in-file statements is the best thing the
barebox people can do now.
 
> I think it i quite instructive to re-read the "12) Sign your work"
> section of the Linux kernel's "SubmittingPatches" document. I think
> our situation is best covered by the notes to back-porters there:
> 
> |  Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practise
> |  to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
> |  message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
> |  here's what we see in 2.6-stable :
> |  
> |      Date:   Tue May 13 19:10:30 2008 +0000
> |  
> |          SCSI: libiscsi regression in 2.6.25: fix nop timer handling
> |  
> |          commit 4cf1043593db6a337f10e006c23c69e5fc93e722 upstream
> |  
> |  And here's what appears in 2.4 :
> |  
> |      Date:   Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200
> |  
> |          wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay
> |  
> |          [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]
> |  
> |  Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
> |  tracking your trees, and to people trying to trouble-shoot bugs in your
> |  tree.
> 
> Note that this is not only a topic from the point of code
> attribution, but also from the point of bug tracking and quality
> insurance.  I consider it a good thing in general.  I definitely
> want to have this in U-Boot myself.
full ack.  But the impression I got on your first mails is not that you
care much about bug tracking and quality assurance in barebox.  I
thought it's more about missing fame for U-Boot and it's contributors.

And it needs an adaption if you copy code that was added and changed by
several commits.  Then I would not add the "original" Sobs to my commit
log, only reference the HEAD commit where the code is taken from.)

> > I don't know if you want to make it easier for people to get the
> > annotations right/better when copying from U-Boot or not.  But if you
> > do, you could change your standard copyright header to include the
> > project's name.  Something like:
> 
> Hm... we could do that, of course. But what exactly would it help or
> change?
If Joe Developer copies a file from U-Boot to barebox, he automatically
get's the in-file attribution right/better.

>          This is not done in Linux, either...
So you scruple to make U-Boot better than the Linux kernel? ;-)

In the section "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" of the
GPL-2 it's even suggested to add 

	<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>

I prefer my suggestion, but YMMV.

Best regards
Uwe

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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Sascha Hauer]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 03:56:44PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Sascha,
> 
> In message <20101006072749.GR28242@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
> >
> > > We all have been working long enough in free and open source software
> > > projects that I can assume you are well aware of the basic principles
> > > of open source software licensing and the requirement to attribute
> > > code to its original authors.
> >
> > Does that mean U-Boot has credits to all the original mtd authors when
> > updating U-Boots mtd support to a newer kernel? /me is digging in the
> > archives; no, it has not. Does that mean with
> 
> We try hard to properly attribute code to the original sources. I do
> not claim that everything in U-Boot is perfect, and if you look long
> enough (and especially far enough back into our 10+ years of
> history), you probably can find exceptions. We are trying to improve,
> and we take all hints on such topics serious.
> 
> In each and everycase, whenever someone asked us (either on the
> U-Boot mailing list or directly) about Copyright issues or similar
> topics, we always addressed these questions directly and as good as
> possible.  Please feel free to search the archives.
> 
> 
> In the specific case of MTD updates you mention here the commit
> messages (extracted with "git log drivers/mtd") contain for example:
> 
> commit 6cd752f9:
> ...
>     The check condition is similat to what is in linux/next.
> 
> commit 18b5a4b4:
> ...
>     This makes it similar to what is in the kernel NAND driver.
> 
> commit aad4a28b:
> ...
>     This was originally part of Thomas Gleixner's patch for
>     adding support for 4KiB pages.
>     This is not part of the U-Boot NAND driver so updating the
>     driver with this to sync up with the kernel NAND driver.
> 
> commit 4f41e7ea:
> ...
>     This patch updates the "chip_shift" calculation in the
>     NAND driver. This is being done to sync up the NAND driver with
>     the kernel NAND driver.
> 
> commit aaa8eec5:
> ...
>     This patch adds support for NANDs greater than 2 GB.
>     Patch is based on the MTD NAND driver in the kernel.
> 
> commit 154b5484:
> ...
>     Update chipselect handling in davinci_nand.c so that it can
>     handle 2 GByte chips the same way Linux does:  as one device,
> 
> commit 8d2effea:
> ...
>     This patch brings the U-Boot MTD infrastructure in sync with the current
>     Linux MTD version (2.6.30-rc3). Biggest change is the 64bit device size
>     support and a resync of the mtdpart.c file which has seen multiple fixes
>     meanwhile.
> 
> commit c45912d8:
> ...
>     NAND: sync with 2.6.27
> 
>     This brings the core NAND code up to date with the Linux kernel.
> 
> commit cfa460ad:
> ...
>     Update MTD to that of Linux 2.6.22.1
> 
>     A lot changed in the Linux MTD code, since it was last ported from
>     Linux to U-Boot. This patch takes U-Boot NAND support to the level
>     of Linux 2.6.22.1 and will enable support for very large NAND devices
> 
> etc.
> 
> As you can see, we try to document where such code is coming from.
> 
> 
> > 9b7076229ec6a958bd835ab70745f7676297ce82 Ilya Yanok is the original
> > author of jffs2 summary support? No, it's the same in the Linux kernel.
> 
> No, he is not. Yes, you are right, proper attibution is missing in
> this commit, too.  Such cases can happen, even with sevral people
> reviewing the submitted patches.
> 
> But as you can see from the many examples above we at least _try_ to
> be careful about code atributions and copyrights.
> 
> 
> > Does that mean you are the original author of include/linux/list.h in
> > 700a0c648df72f2c8e0589c0d0470b5ffd7cab7b? Obviously not.
> 
> Ah, you have to go back to an example from 5 years ago? At the time
> of that patch, the whole git project was just a mere 4 months old,
> and git version control had been used for the Linux kernel for just a
> very few weeks. There was no tradition to have Signed-off-by: lines
> yet, etc.  Many things were far from perfect, then.
> 
> But even then, the first line of the commit message reads:
> 
> 	Add common (with Linux) MTD partition scheme and ...
> 
> The wording "common (with Linux)" may not be really good either, but
> at least it's a pretty clear hint. And the file in question is
> located in include/linux/ , which also carries a certain meaning.
> 
> We have learned our lessons since then.
> 
> And if someone points out errors in our processes, we are answerable
> for our mistakes and try to improve.
> 
> 
> > Please lets go not down that road, it leads to nowhere.
> >
> > We obviously copy code from other projects like U-Boot and the kernel
> > and we do our best to keep the copyrights intact, but we can only do
> > this on a per file base, not on a per commit base. That said,
> 
> Please explain why it should be impossible in a commit message to say
> that the hundreds of lines of code you add were not written by the
> signees, but taken from somewhare else?  In the examples I listed one
> could even give the corresponding git commit ID from the U-Boot repo,
> for example:
> 
> 0ceafe1  Replace direct header access with the API routines
> ...
> 	Copied from U-Boot commit b97a2a0
> 
> Do you think such a short hint cannot be done?

We can (and actually I prefered Jean-Christophe had done it) add a
hint in the commit log saying that the code is derived from U-Boot,
but I will not dig through the U-Boot commit log to see who actually
made a commit looking similar to a barebox commit, and I do not expect
anyone to do so.

Sascha


-- 
Pengutronix e.K.                           |                             |
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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Sascha,

In message <20101007080646.GB28242@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
>
> > Do you think such a short hint cannot be done?
> 
> We can (and actually I prefered Jean-Christophe had done it) add a
> hint in the commit log saying that the code is derived from U-Boot,
> but I will not dig through the U-Boot commit log to see who actually
> made a commit looking similar to a barebox commit, and I do not expect
> anyone to do so.

It is trivial to find the commits that added the lines you are
copying from - just run "git blame" on that file.

Thanks.

Wolfgang Denk

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HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
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Re: Code "borrowed" without attribution to original authors

[Sascha Hauer]

On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 10:45:30AM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Sascha,
> 
> In message <20101007080646.GB28242@pengutronix.de> you wrote:
> >
> > > Do you think such a short hint cannot be done?
> > 
> > We can (and actually I prefered Jean-Christophe had done it) add a
> > hint in the commit log saying that the code is derived from U-Boot,
> > but I will not dig through the U-Boot commit log to see who actually
> > made a commit looking similar to a barebox commit, and I do not expect
> > anyone to do so.
> 
> It is trivial to find the commits that added the lines you are
> copying from - just run "git blame" on that file.

You showed me in a long mail that it's enough of contribution if the
string 'Linux' shows up in the commit log and now you want me to
reference particular commits? That's cool.

Anyway, I don't want to run further into your
barebox-sucks-from-the-community argumentation.

Jean-Christophe, I just reverted the offending commits. Can you please
update the patches to contain credits to U-Boot and Marian
Balakowicz?

Sascha

-- 
Pengutronix e.K.                           |                             |
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Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0    |
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